Apple Sold 300,000 iPads April 3

Apple sold around 300,000 iPads in the United States on April 3, the device's first day of release, according to a company statement. That number included iPads that had been preordered in March. In addition, around 1 million apps and 250,000 ebooks were downloaded for the iPad on April 3, according to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Independent analysts have estimated that Apple sold some 120,000 iPads on the first day of preorder availability in March, and thousands more after that. Calculations suggest that 100,000 iPads could have been sold in stores on April 3.

Apple sold around 300,000 iPads in the United
States by midnight
on April 3, the tablet device's first day of general release, according to the
company. That number apparently includes preordered iPads, which independent
analysts estimated sold 120,000 units on their first day of availability in
March.
Apple also announced that more than 1 million apps for the iPad were
downloaded on April 3, along with 250,000 ebooks from the iBookstore. In an
April 5 statement, Apple CEO Steve Jobs
suggested that the average iPad owner downloaded three apps and "close to one
book" within their first few hours of purchase.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jobs also termed the iPad "a game changer."

Apple may have sold around 120,000 iPads on March 12, the first day that the
device became available on the company's official Website for preordering,
according to blogger and analyst Daniel Tello. Along with members of Investor
Village's AAPL
Sanity forum, including Victor Castroll of Valcent Financial Group, Tello used
data from a 99-order sample over 19.5 hours to reach an estimate of 119,987
units preordered.
By March 26, Tello estimated that
some 240,000 iPads had been preordered, with the device selling at a rate
of 7,000 units per day during its second week. If that rate held constant for
the third week of preorders, then an additional 49,000 units would have been
moved by the April 3 launch date, for a total of 289,000 units.
Of iPad preorders, Tello originally estimated that some 69 percent of
customers gravitated toward the WiFi version of the device, which was
immediately available for in-store purchase or shipment on April 3, versus the
iPad with both WiFi and 3G, which will be available later in April. If you take
those numbers as gospel and apply them to an estimate of 289,000 total preordered
iPads, then some 199,410 of the preordered iPads were the WiFi version. And if
you take that math, in turn, and apply it to Apple's official statement, then
around 100,000 iPads could have been sold in Apple and Best Buy stores on April
3.

The 16GB version of the iPad costs $499 with WiFi, and $629 with WiFi and
3G. The 32GB version costs $599 with WiFi, and $729 with WiFi and 3G. The 64GB
version costs $699 with WiFi, and $829 with WiFi and 3G.
According
to a Morgan Stanley analyst's March 29 research note, Apple could ship as
many as 8 million to 10 million iPads in 2010, while selling in the
neighborhood of 2 million units. "Near-term, we believe the iPad will target
the sizable sub-$800 consumer notebook market, which equates to 30 million
units in the U.S.
and 120 million units globally," analyst Katy Huberty wrote. That "momentum"
could be strengthened by a robust app ecosystem, as well as content such as TV
shows and ebooks.
Researcher iSuppli, meanwhile, has suggested that Apple could sell 7.1
million iPads this year.

Nicholas Kolakowski is a staff editor at eWEEK, covering Microsoft and other companies in the enterprise space, as well as evolving technology such as tablet PCs. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Playboy, WebMD, AARP the Magazine, AutoWeek, Washington City Paper, Trader Monthly, and Private Air. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.